LG Electronics – L1950H review

Offering a crisp and efficient working display, LG’s new L1950H display is a TFT monitor with a reasonable list of reasons to recommend it.

The first, and one that’s increasingly being boasted about on the box of such units, is its 12ms response time. This, in theory, should mean the screen can happily keep up to date with fast moving games and DVD action without the golden curse of ghosting coming into play.

Our tests, naturally, involved a bit of Half Life 2, some Pro Evolution Soccer 4, a couple of Die Hard flicks whilst the boss wasn’t watching and – oh, what the heck – another game of Half Life 2. Not a sign of ghosting in sight. A significant tick to get things started, then.

As an added bonus, the screen is capable of displaying a broad yet subtle colour palette, and in each of the exhaustive tests mentioned above that was plain to see. No dead pixels, either, and LG’s boast that the screen eliminates flicker, glare and image distortion holds water too.

It has a comfortable 19-inch viewing area, and even in everyday applications, when used for long periods of time, not a twinge of eye strain was felt. Text was always clear, and the screen was always comfortable to use.

Its on-screen display is simple and straightforward, controlled by five small buttons on the front of the unit. One of those is an auto-set that allows the monitor itself to find its strongest settings, and this works perfectly well. One thing that’s not included, and we suspect most will see this as a blessing, is in-built speakers. Such integrated speakers rarely sound particularly strong, so it’s not a feature we pined for or missed.

Natively, the L1950H has a resolution of 1,280 x 1,024 pixels, and comes with connections for both analogue and digital inputs. In appearance it’s very slim, with a relatively compact footprint. Finished with a silver fascia, it’s quite a stylish beast too.

So what are the downsides? It’s certainly not the cheapest 19-inch screen on the market, and if you can do without the need for gaming and are willing to compromise on the response time, then some fine economies can be made. And whilst its performance is undoubtedly strong, it’s not quite top of its class.

But the LG 1950H is nonetheless an excellent 19-inch TFT solution that’s stylish, delivers in terms of performance and is great for games. And that combination is likely to make some people really quite happy. It certainly kept us amused.